Earthquake Anxiety Hits Us Where We Live

WENDY LICHTMAN

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, October 3, 1996

THE YEAR 1989 seems long ago, Kobe, Japan, seems far away, and there's so much else to be terrified of that most of the time, to tell you the truth, I just forget to be scared of earthquakes. The only reason I even went to last month's block meeting on the subject was that I had promised to bring the brownies, so after it was under way I got a phone call asking what had happened to me and where was the chocolate.

A woman from the neighborhood association had distributed a packet of papers to fill out before the meeting, and my neighbors were working on the one called "Neighborhood Skills and Equipment Inventory" when I arrived apologetically with a bag of Oreos.

How nice, I thought, to see everyone in the same room. One neighbor volunteered a large wooden box in his yard for the safety equipment, another said she'd check into how much it would cost to install gas valves that shut automatically, and a third accepted the job of block captain.

All this was perfectly pleasant, and at no point during the evening did I think one bit about an earthquake. I joined the conversation and said things like "We should have a crowbar in the box," but I never thought about how the hell you use a crowbar or pictured why we'd need one after an earthquake. I never felt scared.

WE WERE ALL in cheery moods the night of our second meeting, proud that we were filling our equipment box with bandages and a fire extinguisher. When we heard that two blocks over they had ordered emergency generators, we got a little competitive. OK, generators are good, but hey, we had an actual physician on our block. Well, no, he hadn't been available to come to any of the meetings, we admitted, and he most likely wouldn't be anywhere near our block when the earthquake came. But that's probably true of most of us, someone mentioned, and this cracked us up. We were having a good time visiting. We were not afraid of any silly old Hayward Fault. It's nobody's fault at all. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Before we left, our captain told us about classes that the Office of Emergency Services offers. The goal is to get different people to take the classes and share the information. The goal is to learn to take care of each other. Sounds good to me. Pass the guacamole, please.

I volunteered for first aid and spent Friday evening annoyed that I had to spend Saturday morning in class. But sometime between learning how to open the air passages and practicing direct pressure to stop the bleeding, something happened. I lost the denial I had depended upon at the first block meeting, and I lost the sense of humor I had enjoyed at the second. Without those handy defenses, I finally got scared.

The people in Kobe didn't seem far away. The image of my 10-year-old son, sitting at the top of the stairs shaking in 1989, didn't seem long ago. I could picture exactly what the crowbar was for, and I appreciated that the person on my block who was taking the search-and-rescue class was learning how to free someone crushed by a heavy object. I could picture people unconscious, bleeding and shocked, and I wanted to be able to help them if I could. So I started to pay close attention, and when my teacher said to get small tags so we could "red tag" the most seriously injured, I made a note to pick up some at the stationery store.

BUT HERE'S WHERE it falls apart -- it's been a few weeks and I haven't run that errand. Away from all the disaster talk, I just don't believe that the earth will crack open anywhere near me before I get to the stationery store. With any luck, the earth won't ever crack open near me.

But it could, and that's why we're meeting. That's why we've got a captain, and that's why we've got an equipment box. That's why we're learning to take care of each other.